MA in Cognitive Science
Pathway diagram for the MA in Cognitive Science
The Convenor for this degree is Professor Cynthia Macdonald who may be contacted for further information.
Cognitive science has become an essential discipline for those interested in understanding human mentality and behaviour at both the individual and the social level. This very distinctive course involves modules in Anthropology, Psychology, and Philosophy, areas that seek to understand the nature of mind and behaviour in different ways. The programme looks at the relation between ‘folk’ or commonsense psychology, which makes sense of human behaviour by attributing to people mental states such as beliefs and desires, including ‘folk’ morality, and a scientific psychology. It also considers the relation between different kinds of explanations used in the study of mind in distinct empirical disciplines. The question of whether an evolutionary framework can be applied to the human mind and behaviour, and specifically whether the logic of natural selection can be applied to it is considered, as are the various cognitive theories of religion and ritual developed by cognitive anthropologists and psychologists over the last twenty years.
Queen’s University Belfast is unique in having world-class philosophers working on issues concerning the nature of cognitive science and the different ways in which different disciplines studying mind and behaviour work as well as having a range of cutting-edge researchers from anthropology and evolutionary and developmental psychology working in the cognitive science of culture, a new and rapidly growing field in which scholars seek to combine evolutionary, psychological and anthropological approaches to study the interplay between cognition and culture.
Our MA enables students to develop an advanced knowledge and understanding of the theoretical and methodological traditions that inform the study human cognition in the areas mentioned above. The MA can be regarded as way of furthering personal and professional development, culminating in the distinction of a postgraduate degree in Cognitive Science, or as a stepping stone for doctoral research in one or more of these areas at Queen’s.
Staff Research Interests
A number of members of staff from Queen’s are engaged in the MA in Cognitive Science. Some are housed in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, and others are housed in Queen’s Institute of Cognition & Culture.
Professor Cynthia Macdonald (PISP, philosophy) is interested in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. She authored Mind-Body Identity Theories and Varieties of Things and co-edited Philosophy of Psychology and Connectionism, Knowing Our Own Minds, Readings in the Foundations of Contemporary Metaphysics and McDowell and His critics. She has published widely in the areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and metaphysics, in Mind, Nous, Synthese, Analysis, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Journal of Philosophy and edited collections.
Professor Graham Macdonald (ICC, philosophy) is interested primarily in the philosophy of mind, aspects of the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of social science. He co-authored Semantics and Social Science with Philip Pettit, edited Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A.J.Ayer, and co-edited Fact, Science, and Morality, Philosophy of Psychology and Connectionism, Karl Popper: Critical Appraisals, McDowell and his Critics, and Teleosemantics: New Philosophical Essays.
Dr Jesse Bering (Director, ICC, psychology/anthropology) is interested in those aspects of human cognition for which there is evidence suggestive of human uniqueness from other animals. His early exposure to comparative psychology, combined with his PhD in developmental psychology, led to his work studying how the evolved human mind plays a part in religious thinking. More recently, he and his students have begun investigating how our ancestors' concerns about their reputations may have fundamentally altered the course of human social evolution. He has published widely in psychology journals and edited volumes and is author of ‘The folk psychology of souls’, Behavioral & Brain Sciences Target Article with replies to commentaries (in Press).
Dr Paolo Sousa (ICC, anthropology) is interested in folk conceptions of mind, agency and morality, religious representations and kinship relatedness. He has participated in many cross-cultural projects and published numerous articles in the field of cognition and culture. He has also applied an epidemiological approach to the history of ideas of anthropology that has stimulated a major controversy. He is currently writing a book on the folk concept of moral responsibility.
Professor E. Thomas Lawson is the executive editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture and the founder of the cognitive science of religion field and of the North American Association for the Study of Religion. He also played a leading role in the establishment of departments of religion at public universities in the United States during the 1960s. He has published the books Religions of Africa: Traditions in Transformation (1984) and, with Robert N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (1990) and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Ritual Forms (2002).
